A new study from the Harvard School of Public Health suggests that eating a small bowl of oatmeal everyday may be the secret to a longer life.
The long-term study, published Monday, Jan. 5 in JAMA Internal Medicine, found that eating more whole-grain foods—especially bran, the fibrous outer layer of cereal grain—could lower an individual’s risk of death by as much as 15 percent.
Harvard researchers reviewed two large studies that followed more than 100,000 people who were periodically quizzed about what they ate and how they lived for more than 14 years. 74,000 women and 43,000 men completed surveys every two to four years about their diet from the mid-1980s to the 2000s.
The study found that each one-ounce serving of whole grains resulted in a 9 percent drop in the risk of deaths related to cardiovascular/heart disease, which is the leading cause of death in the US. That’s at least 33 grams of whole grains daily—equal to one bowl of oatmeal. In addition, swapping out one serving of red meat per day with a serving of whole grains can reduce the similar risk of death by as much as 20 percent.
“Whole grains may protect the heart by lowering blood sugar and insulin levels,” said Qi Sun, M.D., ScD, a senior author of the study. “This type of property could improve insulin resistance to lower the risk of cardiovascular disease and diabetes.”
“This study further endorses the current dietary guidelines that promote whole grains as one of the major healthful foods for prevention of major chronic diseases,” Sun continued.
The limited study was observational, versus a controlled trial. The biggest difference in desk risk was between the two extremes—those who ate a lot of whole grains versus those that ate little to none—but was not much different for those who ate somewhere in between.
However, Sun pointed out, each additional 28-gram increase in whole grains per day (one bowl of oatmeal) led to even greater protection from heart disease, and a longer and happier life.
“It could be a dose response where you have to eat a certain amount to get the benefits, and going above that would be even better.”
Other benefits of whole grains, Sun added, include major weight loss and other healthy nutrients the body needs. However, the research did not find any connection between eating whole grains and reducing the risk of death from cancer; not enough information is yielded about cancer to draw conclusions.
Previous studies have demonstrated a lower risk of colorectal cancers with high consumption of foods made from grains where the germ and bran have been left intact, he noted.
(With reports from ABC News, USA Today)